Blue Post

Although it snowed again Sunday, it's hard for me to feel blue when the Eastern bluebirds, Sialia sialis, show up in the snow and alternate between tearing at the weathered sumac berries and hunting insects.

Although they are small birds, I often think they hunt like a tiny little hawk, sitting on a perch, flying down to the ground to catch a bug, then flying back up to the perch to consume it and look for the next one.

Male and female both used our chainlink fence and the sumac bushes to perch and hunt for nearly an hour Sunday while it snowed.

I was cruising along on Christel following the chart, and then I looked at the directions.

I can't read German, but I can puzzle out a few words of knitting German, and I saw something about Doppelumschlägen (double yarnover). The only problem was, I couldn't find any double yarnovers in the chart.

Did I ever mention I love the internet? I asked both the Niebling Yahoo group and the Ravelry Niebling group, and between the two I found that there is exactly ONE double yarnover in the chart, in Round 45.

Like a lot of Niebling knitting designs, this one does some puzzling things, namely reducing the stitch count from 37 stitches per repeat in round 41 down to 31 stitches in round 47. Circumference going down . . . as radius goes up.

Nieblings are known for binding or ruffling in odd ways. I have a hard time believing that someone who could design things that look like this was unaware of the effects of stitch count.

So was this deliberate? Stretching a certain part of the circle is going to make that part more open. Ruffling, when you block, is going to give you more density. It could have been deliberate, and as I knit along, I burn to know.

But. Too late! Can't ask him. When we get that Historic Knit time machine, he has to go on the list of stops we're making.